Posted by
beltway girl on Tuesday, March 04, 2008 3:58:16 PM
Hillary's campaign could have been-- and very nearly was-- destroyed at New Hampshire. As Fred Barnes pointed out not all that long ago, a cadidate that had won both Iowa and New Hampshire would traditionally be that party's nominee.
But she got her comeback and said she wanted to give America the same kind of comeback New Hampshire had given her.
So what happened?
The New Hampshire victory was not necessarily a nod of approval toward what National Review has so aptly referred to as the Bill and Hillary Show. Rather, it was a recoiling by voters from going abruptly from one candidate of inevitability to another. Indeed, a New Hampshire loss would have been an early end for Hillary, and a coronation for Obama.
For a generation that has come to see issues of inalienability now as matters of "choice," a nomination without that choice would have seemed downright un-American. In truth, the New Hampshire victory did not really raise Mrs. Clinton from the dead. It only put her campaign on a sort of political life support. Once Iowa began the process of dethroning Hillary with a shocking third-place finish, the future of the Clintonian monarchy was in serious jeopardy. On top of this, the New Hampshire polls all inexplicably pointed toward an Obama crowning in New Hampshire. The numbers fed into the downward spiral of the candidate of inevitability on television screens, in newspaper headlines, and ultimately in the minds of voters.
After Iowa, Hillary was well on her way to meeting the fate of the New England Patriots before the Patriots themselves were undone. And New Hamsphire really didn't change anything.
The same factors that have brought us into the Texas-Ohio storm front were in place from the very beginning. The iconic figure of change with the nuts-and-bolts community organizer experience. Yes, he did have the experience of a community organizer. But he also had a brilliant mind and the oratorical skills of a JFK. He was young. He was charismatic. He was African-American and thus able to refute the inevitability of the history-making First Woman President. He had a health care plan similar to hers and ideas for tuition relief. He had also been against Iraq from the beginning.
A campaign more in touch with reality than the Clintons' would have recognized the threat. But a sort of bubble of overconfidence put the Clinton campaign floating in a fog where the only thing to fear was fear itself.
Not in this case.
So as we head into the storm front, we might recognize that some storms have already done the damage and died down. Survivors have emerged as well as the fallen. At this point, the wiser parties have recognized the real storm to come and have taken shelter in their strongholds, bracing for the coming Obamacain.
- beltway girl